Talk:The Muppets (film)
Article name The old discussion was getting lengthy and convoluted so I'm starting fresh. I think we should call it The Muppets (2011) and avoid the movie/film issue altogether. It's what fans are going to call it amongst themselves anyway to distinguish between talking about "The Muppets" franchise and family of characters, and to avoid confusion with The Muppets Movie/The Muppet Movie. I know it's not consistent with the (film) disambiguation practice here, but I think it makes sense to veer from that in this case. Plus, it will be better for Google and other search engines in the long run. —Scott (contact) 19:12, May 26, 2011 (UTC) :That sounds fair to me--Gonzofan 19:27, May 26, 2011 (UTC) ::Ding! Winner. Good idea! Does that also apply to categories, like The Muppets (2011) Characters, The Muppets (2011) Merchandise? -- Danny (talk) 19:59, May 26, 2011 (UTC) :::It's not any clunkier than "Category:The Muppets (movie) Characters", etc. —Scott (contact) 20:29, May 26, 2011 (UTC) ::::I agree with Danny. Oh, and now that that has been settled, I'll remove the poll about it below shortly. I'll put a new one here to vote on that topic and fix it by Saturday, as before.--Fred (talk) 22:07, May 26, 2011 (UTC) :::::Fred, we don't need a poll for everything. It's already been taken care of. —Scott (contact) 22:29, May 26, 2011 (UTC) ::::::Works for me! However, how are we going to disambiguate articles for ancillary products like storybooks, soundtracks or home videos of the movie? Simply "The Muppets (video)", or "The Muppets (2011) (video)", or "The Muppets (2011 video)" (which would be confusing when the DVD actually comes out in 2012)? -- Brad D. (talk) 00:54, May 27, 2011 (UTC) :::::::The Muppets (2011 video) works for me. It's no more confusing than the title of a page for a 1998 calendar that came out in 1997, for example. The article name is referring to the topic which is the 2011 movie. —Scott (contact) 00:59, May 27, 2011 (UTC) But calling a calendar for 1998 that came out in 1997 a "1998 calendar" is still accurate (it us a calendar of 1998); calling a DVD that comes out in 2012 a "2011 video" is not accurate. -- Brad D. (talk) 14:23, May 27, 2011 (UTC) :The article is about The Muppets 2011. Not The Muppets 2012. —Scott (contact) 15:36, May 27, 2011 (UTC) ::I understand having, say, "The Muppets (2011) Merchandise" (even if some merchandise actually comes out in 2012 or 2013) because it's a category of merchandise for "The Muppets (2011)." But combining the two disambiguations of (2011) and, say, (video) wouldn't work. Using "The Muppets (2011 video)" is not an accurate title because the article is not about a 2011 video release entitled "The Muppets." The article "The Muppets (2011 video)" would be about a 2012 video release of The Muppets (which is a 2011 film), it's not a "2011 video." Going with simply "The Muppets (video)" would work. Or something like "The Muppets (2011) video" could work; but it wouldn't match how we handle the other films (we have "The Muppet Movie (video)" not "The Muppet Movie video.") However using "(2011 video)" as a disambiguation term would not be accurate of the article's subject (a 2012 video release of "The Muppets"). -- Brad D. (talk) 16:12, May 27, 2011 (UTC) :::Options: ::#The Muppets (2011 video) ::#The Muppets (2011) video ::#The Muppets (2011) (video) :::We disambiguate by placing an identifier in parentheses. The Muppets (2011) is already a disambiguation page. Either we use option #3 to strictly follow our manual of style, or we make an exception in this case to avoid a clunky article title. —Scott (contact) 16:28, May 27, 2011 (UTC) ::::Or -- and, I actually like this better -- we just use The Muppets (video), The Muppets (soundtrack), The Muppets (novelization), etc. —Scott (contact) 16:50, May 27, 2011 (UTC) :::::Yeah, I agree with Scott's last suggestion. I can understand Brad's points, and I think The Muppets (soundtrack) is as graceful a solution as we're likely to find. Silly Disney for coming up with such an inconvenient movie title. -- Danny (talk) 16:56, May 27, 2011 (UTC) I agree with Scott's last suggestion too. There's no need to double disambiguate if we don't need to. We do "The Muppets (2011)" for the film in order to differentiate it from the franchise; no need to add the "2011" to other page disambiguations when its not needed to differentiate from other things. -- Brad D. (talk) 17:19, May 27, 2011 (UTC) :I missed all of this due to technical issues (my PC travails remain! Briefly on dad's machine) so I'm glad it worked out. I like the solution, and really didn't like the idea of changing all of the existing "film" pages. It should also work just fine as far as Google juice. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 02:50, May 28, 2011 (UTC) Film vs Movie There are a bunch of pages that link to this article, as well as a The Muppets (film) Characters category. We've also got our first example of Muppets merchandise this week, so we'll probably need a Merchandise category before long. So before we go too far down that road -- can we call it The Muppets (movie) instead? We've used both in the past -- we have a Movies category, but we tend to use (film) in article titles, for ex: Alice in Wonderland (film) and Where the Wild Things Are (film). I prefer movie, and I checked the Google Keywords tool -- people search for "Muppet movie" a lot more than "Muppet film". Anybody object to creating these pages & categories as (movie)? -- Danny (talk) 23:13, May 20, 2011 (UTC) :Were we following Wikipedia's example by using "Film" instead of "movie"? And couldn't "The Muppets (movie)" be a redirect? - Oscarfan 23:27, May 20, 2011 (UTC) ::It could be, but I think "The Muppets (movie)" sounds better and will be better for us in Google search results. I don't really care much about what Wikipedia does. -- Danny (talk) 23:31, May 20, 2011 (UTC) :::My only concern is that people will confuse it with The Muppet Movie, but I guess we could put a note at the top, like we do for records and books that have similar titles. Other than that, I'm okay with it. -- Ken (talk) 02:46, May 21, 2011 (UTC) ::::Yeah, I'd be concerned if we called it "The Muppets Movie," but "The Muppets (movie)" makes it clear enough and does flow better (we used "film" for disambiguation just because it was easiest, I guess, I'm not really sure now, first when it mostly applied to stuff like adaptations and so on). So another vote for the move once we're ready for the final page (right now this is just a redirect to "Muppet movie news" anyway) and for changing categories and such accordingly. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 03:43, May 21, 2011 (UTC) ::::: That sounds like a good idea. Of course, we cannot forget to italicize the title; like this "The Muppets (movie)" to further avoid confusion with The Muppet Movie.--Gonzofan 04:22, May 21, 2011 (UTC) ::::::Not that we have to do it now, but can we go back and change the "film"s to "movie"s later? -- Ken (talk) 04:30, May 21, 2011 (UTC) :::::::You mean hunt up and change every other article that uses "film" outside of The Muppets? We *can*, but I don't think we necessarily need to, especially since most also don't pose any issues as far as category disambiguation and so on. I'm personally fine with this being an exception rather than having to change everything else to fit. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 15:24, May 21, 2011 (UTC) : I agree "The Muppets (movie)" does seem better than "The Muppets (film)". Henrik (talk) 14:04, May 21, 2011 (UTC) ::While I prefer "The Muppets (film)," I don't really care either way. However I'd like us to be consistent with our disambiguation system. So Alice in Wonderland, Where the Wild Things Are, Henson, Rat, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Fraggle Rock, Rocky, Nashville, Dr. Dolittle, On the Town, Gone With the Wind, and Independence Day should all use the same term - either "(film)" or "(movie)." -- Brad D. (talk) 22:46, May 21, 2011 (UTC) :::I'd prefer "film" as well, but don't care enough to stand in the way if the majority prefers "movie." But as Brad said, consistency is key! — Julian (talk) 23:56, May 21, 2011 (UTC) ::::Well, if you know what happened when I renamed Muppet movie news when I first joined the wiki, I'm sure if we wanted to rename it to The Muppets (film), we would have to delete the redirect to Muppet movie news titled The Muppets (film). Then we'd rename it. We also have the option to rename it to The Muppets (movie), and delete nothing.--Fred (talk) 17:28, May 22, 2011 (UTC) Yeah, I would love to ucie "movie" everywhere. I think the difference is that "film" sounds distinguished/snobby, while "movie" is the word that most people use. I don't think we need to change film to movie on article pages, but I think it would be nice (and not that hard) to switch to movie for article titles and categories. As Brad pointed out, there's a little bit of clean-up work to be done, moving some pages and redoing some links, but we've done harder clean-up projects in the past. -- Danny (talk) 17:56, May 23, 2011 (UTC) :Plus, we also have a page titled just "The Muppets" which just redirects to "Category:The Muppets Characters". So we could delete that to make room, then move "Muppet movie news" there, and put at the top in italic: "This article refers to the upcoming film. For the puppet characters by this name, see 'Category:The Muppets Characters' ". Wikipedia does that all the time!--Fred (talk) 21:06, May 24, 2011 (UTC) ::The Muppets (movie) sounds clunky to me. —Scott (contact) 21:15, May 24, 2011 (UTC) :::You'd rather say (film)? (Btw, I was really hoping that The Muppets was a working title so we wouldn't have to deal with this...) -- Danny (talk) 21:45, May 24, 2011 (UTC) ::::Well, I'd rather use my idea I mentioned up there, but is anybody against it?--Fred (talk) 23:16, May 24, 2011 (UTC) :::::I was hoping not to have to deal with it either. But, Jason Segel wins. I think "film" might sound too formal for some folk, but to me, it just sounds more encyclopedic than "movie" and it's what we've been consistently using here anyway. —Scott (contact) 23:22, May 24, 2011 (UTC) ::::::Basically, the reason why I'd prefer to call it (movie) is that I used the Google Keywords tool to see how many people searched for "muppets movie" vs. "muppets film" (and variants of each). Google says 108,000 searches/month for "muppets movie" -- 2,300 searches/month for "muppets film". "The Muppets (movie)" = about 50x more potential traffic for our page. ::::::Fred -- we tend to not follow Wikipedia's example for that kind of stuff... We'd rather give people the thing that they're most likely to be looking for. Even with the new movie, most people coming to the wiki looking for "The Muppets" want to see the characters, rather than the page about the movie. -- Danny (talk) 23:48, May 24, 2011 (UTC) :::::::Okay, then. I say to use "movie".--Fred (The Muppet Moviermitthefroghere|talk]]) 23:53, May 24, 2011 (UTC) I agree that saying "film" might be too formal for day-to-day conversations with your friends, but for an encylopedia it seems fully appropriate and is a more proper term to describe the subject (a theatrical feature film). Now I, personally, don't care about Google search optimization - people looking for information on this will still be able to find it (probably in the top results) regardless of if the page title uses "movie" or "film". If we really wanted the to optimize our search results then "Disney's The Muppets (NEW 2011 movie with Jason Segel)" would be the way to go, but that would be silly. Currently this page (which is simply titled "Muppet movie news") comes up #9 on Google when you search for "The Muppets Movie" (interestingly, our article for The Muppet Movie comes up #55 in the same search, which goes to show how important that "s" is). And the page shows up #8 when you search for "The Muppets Film." Seems like having "movie" instead of "film" in the title doesn't make a big difference. Now it's not even in the top 100 for "The Muppets 2011" (it is #3 for "The Muppets 2011 movie" and #4 for "The Muppets 2011 film.") Would changing the page title from "Muppet movie news" to "The Muppets (movie)" rather than "The Muppets (film) have any drastic affect on the ranking of this page when people search for information on the Muppets' 2011 theatrical feature with Jason Segel and Amy Adams? I don't know; but I don't think we should be basing a decision solely on SEO. -- Brad D. (talk) 18:42, May 25, 2011 (UTC) ::::::::I'll put a poll here so we can vote on it. I'll take the results and remove the poll on Saturday.--Fred (talk) 16:42, May 25, 2011 (UTC) Repeat? Aren't we already doing this page as Muppet movie news? -- Danny (talk) 18:00, February 1, 2011 (UTC) :This is more an article on the film as compared to a listing of every development, production update, set photo, and media mention (Most of which won't be notable in 10 months). It's kind of an update version of The Muppets article and formatted and cleaned up to be closer to what the final article should be like. :This is an article on the actual film, while Muppet movie news is more collection of all the updates on its production and release. -- Brad D. (talk) 20:08, February 1, 2011 (UTC) ::But that means that we have to keep two different (almost identical) articles updated. That's silly. We don't need separate articles yet for the film, the characters, the locations, etc. There's plenty of time to build all of that out. Right now, all of the articles in the Characters category that you created are repeating information and pictures from the main article. ::There are two reasons why we keep In Development stuff to one page, in a special category. First, stuff changes in development, and it's easier to keep one page updated than several. Second -- there isn't enough to say about an unreleased project yet. The character articles that you created are just repeating information and pictures from the main article. It's an incestuous knot of six pages that all link together and say the same things. -- Danny (talk) 01:11, February 2, 2011 (UTC) :::I agree that having two almost identical articles is being a bit repetitive; but I think these two page are different - and are evolving in different directions. :::This page is an article summarizing the film and it's production (similar to what we have for the other Muppet films). I know the release is 9+months away and we don't have all the information yet, but this will grow and evolve. There's time to flesh it out and polish it as we get the information. :::The Muppet movie news page is more of a list of production updates. It chronicles every little update on the production - all the media coverage, production leaks, casting rumors, etc. It's a timeline of production updates - and during the early stages of pre-production it helped us keep a pulse of the production's status. Two years from now, a lot of what's on that page is going to be non-notable in an article on the film. Will we need to note that while making the press rounds for Get Him to the Greek, Nick Stoller commented on the film's status? Or on April 22, 2010, Disney chairman Rich Ross commented on the film? And once the release is closer there will be even more (possibly daily) little news stories to put somewhere. :::This page is on the film itself. The movie news page is on the news coverage of the production (talk show appearances, interview mentions, production leaks, set photos, etc). I think they are different. :::I didn't create all the character pages, but I think some are worthwhile. The Walter and Tex Richman articles include unique information and quotes that aren't on the other pages. I think they are interesting. The Gary and Mary articles are a little weak right now...but I'm sure they'll grow. We have pages for character from released productions that are less interesting or informative. I think it's better to have a bit of a foundation of articles here, rather than wait till Thanksgiving day to have everything explode.-- Brad D. (talk) 03:42, February 2, 2011 (UTC) ::::I don't see what this "have everything explode" concern is, Brad. Also though, there's nothing wrong with info parking on talk pages, which we've done often, before moving to the actual article. These are things we used to either infopark or do as sandbox pages, because otherwise we really *don't* want to create pages for characters until a production has been released (and we've been pretty strict about it in the past, with the occasional lapse). The Tex Richman pic isn't even very good, it's a behind the scenes shot which barely shows Chris Cooper and says nothing about the character, and they're all behind the scenes quotes and advance stuff, since that's all we'll have until the movie comes out. I know this is the biggest Muppet event to happen since the Wiki began, Brad, but I don't think it's too much to ask to keep stuff to one page or, if you want to lay a foundation, do it on talk pages or sandbox. In fact it's all there on Category talk:In Development as policy, and something everyone should keep in mind (I'm doing some cleanup on that right now, on stuff started by other users as well, so it's not something aimed at you, Brad). Should this be moved to current events? -- Andrew Leal (talk) 19:04, February 2, 2011 (UTC) :::::The release date is still ten months away. There is going to be plenty of time to work on all of those pages. For now -- my main concern is that it's six pages to update instead of one. I totally agree that the "updates" page has become long and dull. I think it's time to start consolidating that and taking out old news that isn't news anymore. But I'd rather do that on one page instead of several. -- Danny (talk) 19:31, February 2, 2011 (UTC) ::::::There is still plenty of time to work on all of those pages. So if you want to sandbox the other pages for now so we can use the time to still work on them, that's fine. -- Brad D. (talk) 20:11, February 2, 2011 (UTC) What about cast and crew pages? Segel, Cooper, Arkin, Black, Crystal, Eden, Gaga, Galifianakis, Gervais, Griffin, Sykes, and Stiller have pages for other legitimate Muppet/Creature Shop interactions. However we have articles for Amy Adams, Bret McKenzie, Nick Stoller, James Bobin and Mickey Rooney who (currently) are only connected through this film. Should we merge them for now too? What about creating articles for other confirmed cast/crew members (like Rashida Jones or Mila Kunis)? -- Brad D. (talk) 15:41, February 4, 2011 (UTC) : I think it's fair to have cast and crew pages for the main people. We can easily accommodate all of the character information on the main movie page, but cast and crew bios are unwieldy, and we'll want to gather information about the people as we go along. I think it's premature to have new pages for cameo celebs, for a few reasons: It's possible that the rumor about a particular person isn't true, it's possible for cameo scenes to be cut from the film, and (most of all) those pages won't be very interesting right now -- just "this person has filmed a cameo for the Muppets film." -- Danny (talk) 17:43, February 4, 2011 (UTC) :: Scott just made an edit taking out some info that's just a rumor -- that's why I think this should be one page for now. I'm going to delete this page so we can keep building Muppet movie news -- obviously, we'll re-create this page as we get closer to the release. -- Danny (talk) 20:06, February 9, 2011 (UTC)